I wasn't terribly surprised to see that the Carrier Dome crowd for Saturday's annual spring football game -- Syracuse University offense vs. Syracuse University defense -- was less than half the size of what it had been the year before.

The 2005 number in anticipation of Greg Robinson's first season as Orange coach? It was a school-record 6,029.

This time around in the aftermath of Robinson's 1-10 stagger through last season? It receded to a more standard-issue 2,677.

Neither number, of course, is impressive. Not when places like Oklahoma and Nebraska and Notre Dame pull in as many as 60,000 for their scrimmages. But a 56% dip is a 56% dip . . . and that should be cause for concern up there on the big hill in town.

Compounding this is the matter of SU's -- or rather, Daryl Gross' -- decision to raise football ticket prices for '06. This may or may not be rooted in the thick and rich soil of sound business thought, but what a public relations gamble it is.

The fact is, the SU football product is properly perceived to be a greatly diminished one by the customers, who were told that championships are on the horizon and then were given a 1-10 team that couldn't win a single game in the Big East Conference.

And yet, the cost to watch goes up? Hmmmm.

Listen, until otherwise inspired, I'm still very much on board with Gross and Robinson and some of their vision regarding Syracuse football. I'll accept 1-10 as the necessary (and somewhat predictable) one step backward preceding the anticipated many steps forward.

But I am concerned about that 56% attendance drop from one spring game to the next, and I'm not at all comfortable with what I sense will be the fans' response to the rising price of tickets.

The upshot? It's going to an uneasy 4 1/2 months between now and the season opener at Wake Forest. And then . . . well, who knows? Then, things may really begin to get difficult.